For our scripture reading this morning, if you would take your hymnals, that's a different one, and turn to page 838, 838 in the hymnal. This is the section where there are responsive readings. I'm going to be speaking on Psalm 145 this morning, and I thought Instead of me just reading the whole thing, we might read it together as a responsive reading. So Psalm 145, this psalm is an acrostic. means that in Hebrew, each of the lines of the psalm begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So that would have made, if you knew Hebrew, an easier way of memorizing the contents of this psalm. But in this psalm, we have praise for God for his goodness, and that is going to be our focus for this morning, for this message. So let's read together from God's word. I'll start us, and you can read the part in bold. I will exalt you, my God, the King. I will praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. One generation will commend your works to another. They will tell of your mighty acts. They will tell of the power of your awesome works and I will proclaim your great deeds. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The Lord is good to all. He has compassion for all he has made. All you have made will praise you, O Lord. Your saints will extol you. They will tell of the glory of your kingdom and the speed of your might. So that all men may know of your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. The Lord is faithful to all his promises and loving toward all he has made. The eyes of all look to you and you give them their food at the proper time. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he has made. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him. He hears their cry and saves them. My mouth will speak in praise of the Lord. May God bless this reading of his word. Well, as I said, today we're going to speak about the goodness of God. Every child knows the short prayer that's often prayed at mealtimes. God is great. God is good. And we thank him for our food. Psalm 118 calls us to give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. and his love endures forever. Now we can mean a variety of things when we say that something or someone is good. Sometimes we mean moral goodness, like when we say that someone is a good person or that they have a good heart. or sometimes the word good can mean that someone is skillful at something, like when we say he's a good craftsman or a good pianist or a good job is a job that is performed skillfully and with excellence. To be good can also refer to being kind and caring and generous, as when we speak of someone being good to us. And it's in this last sense that the Bible most often speaks about the goodness of God. God is good to his creation, to the creatures that he has made. He's a benevolent God who shows compassion, kindness, generosity, and love toward the world he has made. And this last meaning of goodness is going to be our focus for this morning. I have two points, God's general goodness to all, and then two, God's special goodness to his people. So God's general goodness to all, verse 9 says, the Lord is good to all. And his mercy is over all that he has made. Verses 15 through 17 say, the eyes of all look to you and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, you satisfy the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. All of creation experiences the goodness of God. Sometimes we call this his common grace, grace that is shared in common by all of creation. He gives life, he sustains life, and is the one who satisfies desires, the desires of every living creature. Everything in life that you and I have and enjoy comes from God. James 1.17 says, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. Do you have food on your table? Do you have a place to live? It's from God. Do you have things or people in your life that you enjoy? That too is from God. And it's important to see that in this sense, God is good even to his enemies. Matthew 5.45, Jesus says that God sends the rain and the sunshine, not only for those who are good, but also for those who are evil. All rain and sunshine and all crops and food are blessings of God upon his creatures. We heard that this morning in the children's sermon. When the Apostle Paul was preaching to a crowd of unbelievers in the Roman city of Lystra, he said this, he said, in past generations, God allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness. So the good things that people experience all over the world testify to the fact that there is a good God behind it all. We can mention this, we can speak about this when we're speaking with others about the Christian faith. There is a God who made the world and who governs it, and this God is loving and good to all, and we see this. We see this in all of life. Well, you may be thinking, but if the God who made the world is so good, then why is there trouble in it? Because there is. All right, there are things we don't know here. We don't know them because God has not revealed them to us. And really this goes all the way back to the question, why did God make the world the way it is? Why did he make a world in which evil would come about? It wasn't there in the beginning, but it was in his plan. And as I said, there's mystery here. There are secret things that only God knows. But here are some things that we do know. We know that God is sovereign over all creation, and so there's nothing that happens that is outside of his decree. God is not surprised by evil, and he has control over the trouble that enters this world and enters our lives. Even the greatest act of evil ever perpetrated in the history of the world, the murder of the Son of God That took place according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. Those are the words of the Apostle Peter as he spoke to a crowd in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. We also know that while the occurrence of evil is in the plan of God, there is no evil in God himself. God is light, says John. and in him is no darkness at all. James says that God cannot be tempted with evil. God never acts with an evil intent. We also know that the world, that the evil of this world serves God's good and wise plans. What people intend for evil God uses for good. God used the crucifixion of Jesus to save sinners. God uses the trouble in people's lives to turn them back to himself. He uses difficulties in the lives of his people to mold and to shape our character, strengthen our faith. Finally, we know that God has promised that one day evil will be overcome by good. Jesus, who died, has also risen. And he told us that he has overcome the world. So while there's trouble for the moment, it will not always be this way. That's what the Christian world and life view says. It's what we believe. The universe is not some endless struggle between yin and yang, between darkness and light, good and evil. And so while it may not always be obvious to us, the world created by a good God is moving toward a good end. The resurrection of Jesus is proof of this. Jesus promises that what was true for him will be true for all who trust in him. He said, he who believes in me will live even though he dies. And so the call to us is not only to recite the words of Psalm 145 as we've done this morning, not just to recite the words about God's goodness, but we're called to believe them. And that brings us to our second point, God's special goodness for his people. We see this in verses 18 and 19. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him. He also hears their cry and saves them. The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. Now, do you see how the scope of God's goodness is narrowed in these verses? In the earlier verses, God is good to all, good and evil, but in these verses, God's goodness is directed only toward those who call on him those who fear him, those who love him. It's these to whom God is near, and it's these whom God will save. And when contrast the wicked, those who do not call on him, do not fear him, and do not love him, these God will destroy. And so what we see here is that while at the present time God is good to all, even the wicked, That will not always be true. There will come a time when God will withdraw his love and goodness from those who do not love him in return. In Romans 2 verse 4, the Apostle Paul reminds us that the present time goodness or kindness and patience of God is for the purpose of leading people to repentance. Repentance means turning from our self-centered lives to lives that are lived for God. God says that he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Jesus tells us that God delights in people turning back to him, and in fact he says in Luke chapter 15 that there will be no more joy in heaven, where there will be more joy in heaven, there will be, over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. God wants to save the wicked. He wants to justify the ungodly. We know this because he sent his son to die on a cross to make it happen. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. Whoever believes in him will have eternal life. What greater act of goodness could there be than this? What more could we ask to see? So if you're having trouble believing in the goodness of God because you're looking at the trouble in this world, I urge you to look at Jesus. Because in him we see the epitome of God's goodness. For whatever reason, God planned that evil would enter his world. But despite that, we know that he was willing to suffer loss to rescue people from it. That's the message that we receive when we look at Jesus. If God had not sent Jesus, the trouble and the decay and the death of this present world would be the final word. And it would be very difficult for us to speak about the goodness of God. If God had not sent Jesus, then the words, all is vanity, or all is empty, or all is futile, those words that we read at the beginning of the book of Ecclesiastes. If God had not sent Jesus, then those words would be the only thing that we could say. But into this futility, a good God has spoken a greater and a more powerful word. And so we can know and we can be confident that there is more than trouble, more than decay, more than death, more than destruction. There is an eternal life of joy promised by a God who is kind in all his works, and who satisfies the desire of every living thing. With Jesus comes a reversal to the sorrow and the death of this present world. We still wait to experience that fully, but it is coming. And that's what David is talking about in this psalm. God fulfills the desires of those who fear him. That's a promise. God hears their cry, and he will save them. He will preserve all who love him. And these promises are made good in Jesus Christ, who says that he came to give rest to all who come to him, and to give life to all who believe in him. Do you want to know and experience the full goodness of God? Then come to him through Jesus. Jesus came to make us his disciples and teach us what it means to live for God. He came to give us the ability to live such lives for God. And he came to forgive and give eternal life to all who turn to him. Why be among the wicked? whom God is going to destroy. You and I, all of us, we've tasted of God's goodness already in this world. You've heard of what he has done in Jesus. Trust in him for what he promises to do in the future. And for those of us here who have trusted in Jesus, don't give up on him. The God we believe in is faithful and true. He will do what he has said. The evil of this world will not prevail. It cannot. And the reason it cannot is because the God we serve is good. And so continue to call on the Lord and pray because as a good God, he is near to those who call on him. He hears your cries. As a good God, he fulfills the desires of those who fear him. And so your labors for the Lord are not in vain. And as a good God, he preserves those who love him. Your love for the Lord is never wasted. Now there's one other thing I just want to touch on briefly that the goodness of God should move us to do and that is to be good to others as God has been good to us. In Luke 6 Jesus calls on us to love our enemies and do good expecting nothing in return. And if we do that, he says, we'll be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. In being good to others, even to our enemies, we resemble our Heavenly Father. We present a picture of his goodness for others to see. This brings glory to God, but it's also an instrument by which others can practically see the goodness of God and that he has sent his son to save all who trust in him, all who call on him. So give thanks to the Lord for he is good. Tell of his goodness to others. Trust in that goodness in your own lives and demonstrate it as you live out lives of faithfulness to the Lord. May God give us the grace to do these things and to bring glory to the God who is good. Let us pray. Father in heaven, thank you for loving us, for being kind and generous, for giving to us all that we have. Thank you most for your son, in whom we see your goodness displayed in a way that we could not even begin to imagine. Remind us of this always, Lord. Remind us of this as we see the trouble around us. Help us to have that hope, that sure hope that we have in Jesus Christ, who has died and who has risen and who is coming again. Lord, we ask these things in his name. Amen.